'I saw a vision ... and my whole life passed before my eyes'

John A. Caponigro is pictured in his home in Roseto. Caponigro was an infantry rifleman during World War II. Caponigro was wounded twice by German mortar fire in the bitter winter of 1944-45.

John A. Caponigro is pictured in his home in Roseto. Caponigro was an infantry rifleman during World War II. Caponigro was wounded twice by German mortar fire in the bitter winter of 1944-45. (Harry Fisher/The Morning Call)

An interview by David VendittaOf The Morning Call

John A. Caponigro of Roseto was 27 and working at a Bangor shirt factory when he volunteered for the Army in the spring of 1944. A rifleman in the 87th Infantry Division, Pfc. Caponigro was wounded twice in Europe during the last winter of World War II. Now 94, he remembers what happened, including an otherworldly experience on the Franco-German border just before the Battle of the Bulge.

We were on farmland in France, near the German city of Saarbruecken. The Germans were firing at us from a hill. The platoon sergeant said, "We're going to get those machine guns up above there." He looked at me and said: "You see that these boys follow me."

So I stayed behind. Twelve men went up an incline on the left, and I saw the machine-gun fire sweeping down on them. I hollered, "Get down!" and went down myself. At least two were killed.

The ground was furrowed -- it was probably plowed a couple of months before. I got in a furrow and snuggled in there. Bullets whistled over my head, just missing me.

It was 12:30 in the afternoon and moist, no sun. A light snow had fallen overnight.

Now this is fact: I raised my head and saw a vision. It was a white shroud about 125 yards in front of me. I could see it clearly against the snow. It had a head and was looking at me but didn't move.

I thought it was God. That's the truth. I believe in God because I actually saw him.

It lasted for 15 seconds, which is a long time in a war, and then disappeared and my whole life passed before my eyes. Everything that ever occurred to me up to that point came out -- so fast, all the way through. I saw things I had forgotten. It's like my mind had unloaded.

That vision gave me confidence. It was a message that I was to live. It carried me throughout the war.

When we went back that night, we were only 35 men that reported in, out of our company of 185. We lost all the officers, killed or wounded. It turned out the machine-gun fire came from a Tiger tank that was about 600 yards away.

We were all crowded in one room of a deserted house. It was cold and raining and a bombardment was going on -- bombardments were continuous, night and day. I started to pray, and I've prayed every night since.

The next day, I got hit. It was toward evening. The Germans were counterattacking. There was an explosion next to me. I assume it was a mortar. It just threw me up in the air 3 or 4 feet, banged me around.

I must've fallen on my knees, because when I tried to get up, I fell down. I had to lay there until they picked me up, and I went to a field hospital and then to a regular hospital in Reims, France. They rubbed my legs and exercised me.

Incidentally, I lost all of my teeth because of that explosion. I lost about four that night. After that, my teeth were always loose, so I had to get them all taken out.

A few days after I was hit, the Battle of the Bulge began. I spent Christmas in the hospital. While I was there, I heard cries. When the medic came up to give me a rubdown on my legs and knees, I said, "What's all the howling about?"

He said, "Some of those guys, their feet are so frozen, we have to move their beds to the window to keep their feet out. They can't stand the warmth." Their legs were outside the windows, in the cold. That would neutralize the pain. "Some of these guys are going to lose their feet," he said.

The following week, just before New Year's, they rushed me out for the Bulge. They took me to a waiting center for soldiers who were going back to their units. I had to wait for the train, and a coincidence happened there at the depot.

Somebody called to me, "Hey John!" It was Frankie Tosoni from Bangor. I knew his family well. He was a college graduate in chemical engineering. I used to see him at the 4th Ward Club.

I was envious that he had that education. I wanted to go to school myself, but I had to leave in ninth grade. It was the Depression, and my father was out of work when the Pen Argyl quarries closed. He was the only provider for our family, and I had seven brothers and sisters.

Right after the Bulge, when I got my second hit and I was in the hospital, I got a letter from my sister Lucy telling me Frankie had gotten killed. And after the war, I got to talking to my buddy Nick Capobianco. He said Frankie was in his outfit.

"A mortar shredded him to pieces," Nick said. "I saw it."

Icy green Germans

They pushed me into Belgium, up to St. Hubert and through Bastogne. We were in convoys. We'd march all night long in the snow until the convoy would come back with empty trucks and then we'd ride for miles. Then they'd drop us off and we'd keep on walking.

It was so damn cold. I would keep my feet warm by wiggling my toes all the time. I even do it now. As long as you kept your feet warm, your body never felt overly cold. At night, we rested on our rifles, sitting up. You couldn't lie down, because if you fell asleep, you might not get up. Perhaps somebody wouldn't even find you.

In the middle of February, we came out of a wooded area and there were dead German soldiers. They were frozen stiff, icy green, with their legs and arms up. Our tanks came up and drove right over them. Arms and legs were flying. The dead Germans just broke apart.

When we were near Pruem, Germany, I was hit the second time. We were pushing the Germans back in deep snow. An explosion knocked me down. I could feel blood running down my leg. Shrapnel from a mortar hit me in the tailbone, penetrated and ricocheted down my left leg to the back of my thigh. It just missed the base of my spine.

I had to go to a hospital in Nancy, France, and it was two weeks before they operated on me. They couldn't find the shrapnel -- they didn't have X-rays at that time -- but I could feel it. I told them where it was. They got the shrapnel out and gave it to me. I still have it.

You know, when I look back, I can't think of one instance that I was ever afraid. I don't know if it had to do with that vision I saw. Maybe that cleansed me. Maybe I had a different mind after that. Or maybe I resigned myself to do or die.

Epilogue

Caponigro returned to his unit -- Company F of the 346th Infantry Regiment -- after a month in the hospital, but the ranks were full and he was reassigned to supply duty. He has Purple Hearts for the wounds he suffered Dec. 12, 1944, and Feb. 27, 1945, and a Bronze Star.

He returned to work at the Golden Crown shirt factory in Bangor. Later he became general manager of the cutting department at the Merry Maid blouse factory in the borough, retiring in 1985. He belongs to the Lehigh Valley Chapter of the Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge.

He and his wife, Linda, live in the same Roseto home built for his parents in 1903 and that he was born in. Of his four sons, one is an Air Force veteran and another is a retired Army lieutenant colonel. A grandson is a Navy fighter pilot.

Asked if he ever killed anyone as a rifleman, Caponigro said: "I don't know if I did or not. We'd keep firing, and we were getting fired at. When the fire lessened, we moved ahead and found out that the Germans were dead. I didn't want to know if I had killed any. I feel good that I don't know."